Kylo Ren...

Thank GOD we finally have a good Star Wars movie again. Now we can forget those plasticky green-screen monstrosities called Episode 1-3.

And Kylo Ren is a really good bad guy.

Cheerio. And may the forks be with you.

Just collecting some of my own stuff here

Progress of "Giant Ymir"

Here's a progress image of "Giant Ymir". I'm getting more and more comfortable doing illustrations digitally, but I STILL prefer doing the first sketch with pencil on a piece of paper. If that makes me old-fashioned then yes, I am.

Had fun doing this one. I focused on shapes and light and mood... and I feel that I managed to take another step forward.

Cheerio.

Confession...

I have a confession to make.

I've watched Fifty Shades of Grey.

And yes, I'm totally aware that I told many people that I'm not going to see that movie under any circumstances (I believe the sentense "I'd rather take a vinegar enema than watch that movie" was said at some point), but when the opportunity presented itself, my thought process was pretty much like... I can have couple of hours with my wife, no kids running around, in a movie theatre, watching couple of young, fit and beautiful (in a sort of low-fat kinda way) people "doing the nasty" on big screen... How bad could it be, right?

And I have another confession to make too.

... it's really not that bad. No, don't get me wrong, I'm not implying it's a GOOD movie, because it isn't. I'm just saying it's perfectly on par with most of the slice-of-life-romantic-comedy-drama-stuff I've seen on screen. In fact, I quite liked the way the whole movie was shot. The color palette and lights and camera angles were very good and the movie was visually quite beautiful.

But... there was also big problems. Mainly 1) story and 2) characters.

Now, I don't have any problems with the "sexual awakening of a young woman -theme" (even though as a forty-something, father-of-three I'm probably not in the core target group), or the "filthy rich, powerful and handsome young dude falls for the pretty virgin who looks like she stole aunt May's wardrobe" -theme. But the story lacks all... dynamics. I mean the guy has all the money and power in- and outside the bedroom. And the girl has, what? A right to say no... and that's it. There's no real balance of power between the main characters. I also found it quite unrealistic that a girl with basically no sexual experience whatsoever is so OK with some dude she met couple of weeks ago tying her up and doing god knows what to her. I think 99.9% of people would freak out big time in that situation... I know I certainly would (but then again, I'm not into young, rich dudes anyways). And then there's dialogue. Oh, Lord. I damn nearly ruptured my spleen trying not to laugh out loud when the dude said the legendary one-liner: "I don't make love. I fuck. Hard."

The other big issue was the characters. They are beyond paper-thin. They are more like sketches of an idea of the  characters. We have the innocent yet surpisingly open-minded young working-class student girl who is sucking and biting her lower lip like it's essential part of her diet, and then we have the young business tycoon billionaire control freak dude with the personality of a cardboard box, who looks like he's suffering from constipation all the time. And the names then... Christian Grey is almost ok, but Anastasia Steele? Jaysis, that sounds like a heavy metal singer or a bloody porn star!

Above all else though, I think the biggest problem of the movie was the lack of focus. I found myself wondering more than once what was the meaning of the movie. To shock me? To arouse me? To intrigue me? To tell a good story? It didn't do any of those... but at least it beats staying home and scrubbing the toilet.

Right?

Right.

From the void...

The best part of making an illustration is the magical moment when the smudges on the paper or on the screen stop being something and become someone. With the Old Knight above the transition was very fast and very powerful. It was the moment I added some lighter bluish to the irises. Three-four brush strokes... max four seconds... and suddenly I realized those were eyes that had seen life... and even more importantly... seen things I hadn't seen. I felt shivers run down my spine.

It is an amazing feeling to bring something... someone out from the void. To create something out of nothing.

Cheerio.

Rant about X-Men: Days of Future Past... and time-travel...

Movie rant coming up. No plot spoilers... if you've seen the trailer(s), or read the comic or otherwise heard talk what the movie is generally about, you can read on with no worries. Trust me.

Soo... Saw the X-Men: Days of Future Past yesterday. I liked it. It's very entertaining, solid superhero/action flick. I didn't glimpse my watch (well, phone... since I haven't had a wrist watch in years) one time during the film. And when the credits rolled on the screen, I got up and walked out the theater feeling happy about the fact that I had seen the film...

... and then I started thinking about the time-travel stuff.

Now, I'm pretty sceptical about the whole idea that you could go back in time in any shape or form and fix something and things would go *poof* in the future and everyhing else would stay just the same. I think your mere existence in the past would cause ripple effects in the future: every item you'd touch, every person you'd interact with, quite literally every breath you'd take. All those things would cause tiny changes, tiny ripples that would get bigger and bigger until they would end up shaping the future dramatically... and the further back you'd go, the bigger ripple effects you would create. If you'd go back five minutes to buy a different flavour Oreos than you originally did, that wouldn't change the future much... but if you'd go back, say 20 years to do the same... now, that would be more tricky.

Also, in order to minimize the ripple effects, you'd have to do a real pin-point job, "go in, do your thing, get out", 3 seconds tops... And trust me, those pesky X-Men didn't exactly do that. Instead they mucked about in the past for several days destroying property and causing people all sorts of physical and mental trauma... and that doesn't have ANY effect in the future? Uh-huh!

You'd also have to think about the inevitable side-effects of your actions. For example, if you'd go back and convince Henry Ford to make cars with three tires, you wouldn't come back to the same future, only with three-wheeled cars. Your action would affect car manufacturing, tire manufacturing, employment in the automotive industry, design, traffic safery, advertising etc. etc.


The bottom line I'm trying to make here is that you couldn't go back and change just one thing and leave everything un-affected. I just woudn't WORK that way!

*pant... pant... pant*

But as I said in the beginning. I liked the movie...

...and I can recommend it to all superhero movie fans... just... don't think too hard about time-travel stuff. Okay?

PS. Quicksilver is awesome.

Cheerio.

Orcsessss...

Right. Did some digital doodles of orc heads.

Ugly mutt, or tiger, or ape, or something...

Just having fun with this tiger/panther/ape/four-eyed monster concept sketch.

Hope you like it.

Cheerio.

Breaking down a scene...

Hullo again.

Continuing my adventures in the weird and wonderful world of environments illustrations. This time did a scene with photo-textures & photoshop weirdness. No sketches, no lineart, just pure stream-of-consciousness. Here's the breakdown...

Hope you like it.

Cheerio.

More uncharacteristic art...

Trying out new techniques, new styles and new subjects... It's really much fun!

Here's the finished one...

...and here's couple of "work-in-progress"-thingies.

Hope you like it.

Cheerio.

Stepping out of my comfort zone...

Is this... like, impressionism? Sort of?

Anyways, It's called "Blizzard".

Trying some rough photoshop speedpainting...

After seeing (too) many amazing speedpaint/concept art/production paintings by the likes of Feng Zhu, I decided to try do one myself. For a dude like me, who's pretty heavily "lineart-oriented", that was an interesting experience.

Oh, and since I already have done "Boner", I decided to call this one "Floater" ;-)

Cheerio.

ZBrushing again...

I'm starting to fall in love with this program. The sculpting phase is still mostly a learning process through trial and error, but once you get the shape down and you render stuff to photoshop... THAT'S when the magic happens.

This time I wanted to do a fantasy creature with a twist. Usually fauns are portrayed cute, beautiful (and muscular) or fierce (and muscular).

I wanted to do a scared, thin and bony, deformed creature with a cleft lip, broken nose and lot of small scars. Someone who has been called a freak through all his life.

Hope you like it.

Cheerio.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? IS IT A... umm... flying dildo?

For those, who don't follow me in Facebook...

I'm watching Man of Steel and I just have to post this screencap from it. Now, it's pretty early in the movie, and I won't tell anything spoilery about the plot. I will just mention that the "things" in the picture are some sort of deep freeze pods.

But Jaysis. I mean, look at them... just look at them. Aren't they just liiiiittle bit phallic? Those designs would make Giger blush like a little girl!

If someone wants to start making Man of Steel vibrators, you already got your product design right there.

Cheerio.

Zbrushing...

Saw these amazing tutorial videos by Ben Mauro and was FINALLY able to make some sort of sense of Zbrush (+Photoshop)

So, may I present you... The Alien Commander.

Hope you like it.

Cheerio.

The smiling boy refuses to leave me alone...

You know who he is, don't you?

It's FAN ART TIME!

Couple weeks back bought and read an excellent graphic novel "Perkeros" by JP Ahonen and KP Alare. Since then I've been thinking I should do a fan art piece with the drummer bear in it... so now I did. This was a real quick one (at least on my standard), 20-30 minutes tops. It's called "A break between the sets"

Hope you like it.

Portrait of a narcissistic twat...

Didn't feel like posting several photos of myself on my facebook-page, so I decided to post the other one here. The original photo by Tapio Aulu. Photoshopping by me.

Cheerio.

The Ocean at the End of the Bloody Amazon...

I pre-ordered The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman from Amazon.com a loooong time ago.

When the book came out it seemed the whole social media (well, mine at least) bursted with news and reviews and reader comments. Every place I looked, there was something about Neil and about the book.

But I waited my copy...

and waited...

and waited.

I hid under the virtual table, my virtual fingers in my virtual ears, trying to avoid everything even remotely spoilery. I became anti-social hermit against my will.

And then, it arrived...

...and I devoured it.

Now, I didn't read it in one sitting (as a father of three boys I really don't have sittings long enough to do that) but instead in several short ones (at the dinner table, on the living room sofa or on the floor), one standing next to the playground and several cookings (one dinner and two breakfasts).

I loved the book. It's beautiful and expertly crafted like a delicate piece of jewellery, or (as I referred in my facebook-page) a dessert, perfect in shape, size and taste. Well done, Mr. Gaiman. Well done indeed.

Cheerio.

Boner revisited...

Here's the finished piece and a step-by-step picture.

Cheerio.